Skip to content
quotesby

About this quote

What does it mean?
Twain jokes that hogs enter unlocked church floors freely while people only go when forced.
In plain terms
Hogs go to church more than people do.
What can you take from it?
People often avoid religious attendance without external obligation.

Where it applies

  • community life
  • religious attendance
  • social observation

Putting it to work

  • observe attendance
  • note obligations
  • reflect on habit

Questions to consider

  • Why do you attend?
  • Is choice meaningful?

Another view

The comparison reduces people to animals which can be offensive.

More from Mark Twain

  1. Pilgrim's Progress, about a man that left his family, it didn't say why. I read considerable in it now and then. The statements was interesting, but tough.

    Permalink to quote #83
  2. We said there warn't no home like a raft, after all. Other places do seem so cramped up and smothery, but a raft don't. You feel mighty free and easy and comfo…

    Permalink to quote #85
  3. We catched fish and talked, and we took a swim now and then to keep off sleepiness. It was kind of solemn, drifting down the big, still river, laying on our ba…

    Permalink to quote #82

Related quotes

  1. 'God,' the saying might also read, 'must hate the common people because he made them so common.'

    Philip WyliePhilip Wylie quote #10
  2. Si Dieu nous a fait a son image, nous le lui avons bien rendu.

    VoltaireVoltaire quote #23
  3. Miss Frobisher smiles, with little cause that I know of. If Jesus of Nazareth had had before him the example of Miss Frobisher getting through the Latin degree…

    Tom StoppardTom Stoppard quote #44